A comparison of terrestrial water storage variations from GRACE with in situ measurements from Illinois

This study presents the first direct comparison of terrestrial water storage estimates from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellite mission to in situ hydrological observations. Monthly anomalies of total water storage derived from GRACE gravity fields are compared with combined soil moisture and groundwater measurements from a network of observing sites in Illinois. This comparison is achieved through the use of a recently developed filtering technique designed to selectively remove correlated errors in the GRACE spectral coefficients. Application of this filter significantly improves the spatial resolution of the GRACE water storage estimates, and produces a time series which agrees quite well (RMS difference = 20.3 mm) with the in situ measurements averaged over an area of ∼280,000 km2.

[1]  C. Wagner,et al.  Degradation of Geopotential Recovery from Short Repeat-Cycle Orbits: Application to GRACE Monthly Fields , 2006 .

[2]  S. Swenson,et al.  Post‐processing removal of correlated errors in GRACE data , 2006 .

[3]  C. Hughes,et al.  Observing seasonal bottom pressure variability in the North Pacific with GRACE , 2006 .

[4]  S. Swenson,et al.  Climate model biases in seasonality of continental water storage revealed by satellite gravimetry , 2006 .

[5]  Petra Döll,et al.  GRACE observations of changes in continental water storage , 2006 .

[6]  Matthew Rodell,et al.  Total basin discharge for the Amazon and Mississippi River basins from GRACE and a land‐atmosphere water balance , 2005 .

[7]  James L. Davis,et al.  Constraining hydrological and cryospheric mass flux in southeastern Alaska using space‐based gravity measurements , 2005 .

[8]  C. Shum,et al.  Non-isotropic filtering of GRACE temporal gravity for geophysical signal enhancement , 2005 .

[9]  Isabella Velicogna,et al.  Greenland mass balance from GRACE , 2005 .

[10]  Matthew Rodell,et al.  Spatial sensitivity of the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) time‐variable gravity observations , 2005 .

[11]  Frédéric Frappart,et al.  Time variations of land water storage from an inversion of 2 years of GRACE geoids , 2005 .

[12]  Clark R. Wilson,et al.  Simulated estimation of hydrological loads from GRACE , 2005 .

[13]  M. Watkins,et al.  GRACE Measurements of Mass Variability in the Earth System , 2004, Science.

[14]  Victor Zlotnicki,et al.  Time‐variable gravity from GRACE: First results , 2004 .

[15]  Sonia I. Seneviratne,et al.  Inferring changes in terrestrial water storage using ERA-40 reanalysis data: The Mississippi River Basin , 2004 .

[16]  M. Watkins,et al.  The gravity recovery and climate experiment: Mission overview and early results , 2004 .

[17]  W. Peltier.  GLOBAL GLACIAL ISOSTASY AND THE SURFACE OF THE ICE-AGE EARTH: The ICE-5G (VM2) Model and GRACE , 2004 .

[18]  Jeffrey P. Walker,et al.  THE GLOBAL LAND DATA ASSIMILATION SYSTEM , 2004 .

[19]  S. Swenson,et al.  Estimated accuracies of regional water storage variations inferred from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) , 2003 .

[20]  S. Swenson,et al.  Methods for inferring regional surface‐mass anomalies from Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) measurements of time‐variable gravity , 2002 .

[21]  Matthew Rodell,et al.  An analysis of terrestrial water storage variations in Illinois with implications for the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) , 2001 .

[22]  A. Robock,et al.  The Global Soil Moisture Data Bank , 2000 .

[23]  F. Bryan,et al.  Time variability of the Earth's gravity field: Hydrological and oceanic effects and their possible detection using GRACE , 1998 .

[24]  Elfatih A. B. Eltahir,et al.  Hydroclimatology of Illinois: A comparison of monthly evaporation estimates based on atmospheric water balance and soil water balance , 1998 .

[25]  W. Peltier.  Mantle Viscosity and Ice-Age Ice Sheet Topography , 1996, Science.

[26]  Scott A. Isard,et al.  A Soil Moisture Climatology of Illinois , 1994 .

[27]  S. Changnon,et al.  Relations between precipitation and shallow groundwater in Illinois , 1988 .